Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday December 21, 2011 @04:28PM
from the johnny-copter dept.

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Pakistan is still blockading NATO war supplies passing through the port of Karachi in response to last month's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by an alliance air strike. But inside Afghanistan, supply lines are about to get a lot safer for NATO's logisticians as an unmanned helicopter just delivered a sling-load of beans, bullets, and band-aids to Marines at an undisclosed base in Afghanistan marking the first time a drone has been used to resupply a unit at war. The 2.5-ton, GPS-guided K-MAX can heft 3.5 tons of cargo about 250 miles up and over the rugged and mountainous terrain of Afghanistan across which NATO troops are scattered and can fly around the clock. 'Most of the [K-MAX] missions will be conducted at night and at higher altitudes,' says Marine Capt. Caleb Joiner, a K-MAX operator. 'This will allow us to keep out of small-arms range.' K-MAX will soon be joined in Afghanistan by Lockheed's robo jeep that can carry a half a ton of supplies for up to 125 miles after being delivered to the field in a CH-47 or CH-53 helo."

It is a very narrow single seat helicopter. It can carry heavy loads due to it using two main rotors as opposed to the usual main rotor/tail rotor combination. The ones in the story just happened to be modified to run unmanned.

All in due time, Moheeheeko. Right now drones are very susceptible to jamming and satellite failures. Helicopter pilots navigate primarily using ground reference, which robots aren't good at yet. We need a backup to GPS and TACAN. Delivering beans to the wrong location isn't really a problem - just an inconvenience, really. Delivering live weapons (as in, shooting) to the wrong area would result in enough of a public outcry to push the entire unmanned program back a decade.

not true at all. we have missiles and other auto navigate devices that use terrain references only. In fact, I was surprised to find out the drone we lost didn't use that for specifically the reason we lost it.

In the US we spend more money per student than any other county. Problems like the one you describe occur because too much money disappears into administration. You probably have no money for a new teacher's salary because administrators wanted to redecorate one of their offices.

That said, you really need to work much harder on your silly flame bait, its not supposed to be so obvious.

Meanwhile Khan Academy offers basically a complete curriculum for free. The model of teaching in this country needs to change dramatically. Why are we not using technology to teach our kids not only less expensively, but more effectively? Let students work at their own page with teachers there to assist as necessary. Then maybe break kids out in groups based on their pace to interact and work collectively. We haven't changed how we teach our children in this country in probably 200 years. We can do th

Funding probably ain't the issue. With a few obvious exceptions, America's under-performing schools are among the best-funded in the world. Throwing even more money at the problem is almost as stupid as our children.

Meanwhile, my kid's school can't afford to hire enough teacher for every class.

The whole point of this thing is to save money. It costs about $1M / year to keep one soldier in a combat theater. Whether those savings are used back home or for more adventures abroad depends on who gets voted into office.

U.S. spending on K-12 education per student [mercatus.org] is the second highest in the world (adjusted for local cost of living, PPP). If your kid's school can't afford to hire enough teachers, the problem isn't because they lack funding.

THIS. "Teachers" lie, especially when it comes to how effective/efficient they are....Sure, the teachers need to get paid, the building needs to be kept in decent repair, but where the FUCK is all that money going? One place it goes is to the superintendent whose salary is probably well into the six figures, and they are probably doing a shitty job of managing (just ask the unions!)

So your premise is that "Teachers lie" and to prove it, you use an example of an overpaid superintendent who teachers have no control over (and who is supposed to be in charge of the teachers).

I believe the point is that we have enough money going to the schools already, but it isn't going to the right places. So the solution is not "more money" but "stop wasting the money you already have."

If for every thousand dollars you send to schools, they take out seven hundred and burn it in a giant cash furnace under the school, can you see why putting out the fire might cause a greater improvement for education than doubling the school's fuel budget?

First off, you do know that teachers dont stop working at 3:30. Most are there from 7 and sometimes even 6 AM and dont finish up until 5 PM. What are they doing, marking, preparing for class and even cleaning up that they cant do when looking after 30 unruly children. During exam/reporting time they tend to work even more hours at home. Why do they do it for such low pay, well they actually want to teach. Yes I've lived with real teachers.

THIS. "Teachers" lie, especially when it comes to how effective/efficient they are. In the past 20 years, the "price" of education in the USA has gone up over 200% on a per-pupil basis (and the students sure as hell aren't 200% smarter to show for it).

Do you know what it means for the price going up over 200% in 20 years? It means that the average inflation rate was around 3.5%. How is that such a shocking cost hike?

Not quite. 200% represents a tripling ($100 becomes $300; the difference is $200, or 200%). The present value of $300 over 20 years at about 5.65% is $100. But, oh wait. Inflation has averaged only about 3% over the last 20 years.

Guess what? The future value of $100, in 20 years at a rate of 3%, is about $180.60. So $80.60 of the increase is due to inflation, and $119.40 of it was due to something else. I'd call that a pretty severe dysfunction.

The US inflation rate in 1981 reached around 12%, largely due to the OPEC oil crisis. From then, up until '92 it rarely went below 4% and since then it floated between 2 and 4%. Therefore, without doing any math, it's safe to say that the equivalent constant inflation rate would be closer to 4% than 3%.

Nevertheless, even if you consider that nowadays the US government spends 3 times as much money on education than 20 years ago, that would mean that the sequence of governments decided to implement policies

Only because energy prices have gone up (and with it food costs) - this isn't "inflation" in the sense of the money supply causing prices and wages to rise. This is simply because energy has become more scarce and expensive.

So it depends on what you are trying to measure. If everyone's salary were to go up to match the price for the scarce commodity, then the commodity would simply become even more expensive - in other words, it is impossible to match salaries to a scarce resource unless we ration.

As you yourself point out, the money generally goes to the administration. Sometimes it gets excessively spent on extracurricular activities; I don't think such things are a waste, if your goal is to educate then keeping kids in school and out of juvi is a desirable thing, but sometimes too much gets spent on one program or another that really ought to be doing more to support itself to the detriment of other programs or indeed, basic education. But teachers, lying? Mostly not.

Because they can't. Helicopters can't generate enough lift to fly out of the way of small arms fire without great difficulty in general. And in places like Afghanistan that are in the mountains and the people firing the small arms get closer they aren't able to.

Depends on the helicopter. I do believe an A-Star landed on the top of Mount Everest though from what i remember reading it was very tough to do. The less air pressure the less lift, and as in Afghanistan the hotter the air the less air mass available to generate lift. Hell on a hot day in Vancouver, with full manifold pressure in a Bell 47 (think the helicopters you see in M*A*S*H) I was hovering 3 inches off the ground. I have taken said helicopter (built in 1956 btw) To 6500 feet ASL without any pr

What are you talking about? Trained reaction time of a simple response is on the order of 150-200ms. If you actually have to think about what the response needs to be, you're looking at significantly longer. A digital autopilot with sufficient sensor data will outperform a pilot in every operating condition it is programmed for. It will be able to land much faster and more precisely than a human pilot, under varying wind conditions. The problem is the autopilot is not adaptive to operate in situations

What he is talking about is a remotely piloted vehicle, rather than the largely (or completely) autonomous vehicle you are describing. I suspect the KMAX is autonomous rather than merely remotely piloted, but then again, I didn't RTFA (yet).

If it's something they can control with just a laptop in the field, I would interpret that to mean "largely autonomous" and the operator just says "go to coordinates x,y,z" and then click "land there". At worst , it's entirely auto-stabilized and the pilot just says left,right,up,down,forward,backward. Either way, reaction time isn't going to be a big deal. We gave up on remotely-operated manually-stabilized craft long ago (heck, even manned craft are automatically stabilized a lot of the time now).

Pilots are trained to do X when Y arises, so most of the time they're supposed to be operating on training anyway. The real problem is getting all that sensor data into the aircraft in a way in which it can actually be used.

Iran CLAIMS TO HAVE spoofed GPS signals and tricked the drone to land, undamaged, where they wanted it to land. What prevents someone them from doing the same (or far worse) with Homeland Security drones in the US?

How could the drone not know that the signal was coming from a ground based transmitter? The signal should have been greatly muted by the skin of the radar evading drone. I think it is very suspicious that they even knew that the drone was there in the first place. Something is horribly wrong here.

How could the drone not know that the signal was coming from a ground based transmitter? The signal should have been greatly muted by the skin of the radar evading drone. I think it is very suspicious that they even knew that the drone was there in the first place. Something is horribly wrong here.

Here's a more likely explanation: Something on the drone malfunctioned, causing it to lose power and glide to the ground. Iranians found it on the ground shortly thereafter, took it to their favorite gymnasium, and came up with a story that makes them look good.

Iran CLAIMS TO HAVE spoofed GPS signals and tricked the drone to land, undamaged, where they wanted it to land. What prevents someone them from doing the same (or far worse) with Homeland Security drones in the US?

I believe what they did was even more crude. They jammed GPS signals (trivial to do - ask LightSquared for how). This put the drone in a backup mode of operation (because well, it doesn't have positioning information, and it may not be able to determine last good location before the jamming interf

Claims? Well shit, we're apparently having problems enough with living terrorists, now we have to contend with ones speaking from beyond the grave? Osama the Terrorist Ghost.Or is this more of a Achmed situation? youtu.be/1uwOL4rB-go

The FCC, of course! The perpetrators would be fined for illegal radio frequency use. Meanwhile, once the media gets wind of the "downed" drone occurring on American soil, it will be deemed a terrorist act, so the House and Senate would immediately begin crafting the "No Drone Left Behind Act."

No. They didn't. GPS is but one of many redundant navigation systems the drone had. If the GPS is disagreeing with the INS and airspeed sensors, it would drop the GPS signal in a heartbeat. And those are only the unclassified navigation systems that all military aircraft have. If Iran was capable of tricking the drone into landing, they wouldn't need to send the drone to China to be exploited.

I wonder why the design is so conventional looking? They must have modified an existing light helicopter for remote control. Either that or the standard cockpit style helicopter design is already the most efficient aerodynamically. I was expecting to see what amounted to an engine and gas tank that can fly.

Could go either way. Its either going to still look like a typical helicopter (like the Global Hawk still appears more like a manned aircraft) or much more specialized, similar to how the Predator and Reaper drones look nothing like a traditional aircraft.

Probably because they figured that a) they had existing design specs to accommodate a human pilot, b) you can transport people that way, and c), if the enemy is using fancy jamming techniques, a pilot can hop in and to the task manually.

The design is "conventional looking" because the Kaman K-MAX [wikipedia.org] is a conventional helicopter. If you look closelly you can see the cockpit, with a human pilot seat and human pilot controls. This is a conventional commercial helicopter, specifically designed for the task of transporting heavy loads, which had some of it's production models fitted with extra gear to also be usable as an unmanned aircraft.

You mean you hope it has more brains than "GPS signal lost; landing". Who the fark sends in unmanned robotics systems without the ability to dead reckon or navigate via an alternative external landmark (stars/land topography)?

As early as the mid-1960s, advanced electronic and computer systems had evolved enabling navigators to obtain automated celestial sight fixes. These systems were used aboard both ships as well as US Air Force aircraft, and were highly accurate, able to lock onto up to 11 stars (even in daytime) and resolve the craft's position to less than 300 feet (91 m). The SR-71 high-speed reconnaissance aircraft was one example of an aircraft that used automated celestial navigation. These rare systems were expensive, however, and the few that remain in use today are regarded as backups to more reliable satellite positioning systems.

Celestial navigation continues to be used by private yachtsmen, and particularly by long-distance cruising yachts around the world. For small cruising boat crews, celestial navigation is generally considered an essential skill when venturing beyond visual range of land. Although GPS (Global Positioning System) technology is reliable, offshore yachtsmen use celestial navigation as either a primary navigational tool or as a backup.

Strategic ballistic nuclear missiles use celestial navigation to check and correct their course (initially set using internal gyroscopes) while outside the Earth's atmosphere. The immunity to jamming signals is the main driver behind this apparently archaic technique.

I should point out that, while these used to be expensive mechanical systems, most of this can be done with software and properly calibrated and redundant CCD sensors.

In fact, while these used to be heavy and power-hungry mechanical systems, most of this can be done with lightweight and versatile systems that not only have a smaller power budget and take up far less mass, but which can be installed in a fixed rather than floating context which is more durable, and which can track multiple stars and deliver (in some cases) multiple position fixes per second where earlier systems, like that on the SR-71, only [officially?] provide one to a few per minute. Even better, the

Almost forgot, not only is there celestial navigation, but also a whole set of tools use can use with accelerometers and gyroscopes to do inertial navigation. While not as good as celestial navigation, inertial navigation is useful when you can't rely on exterior navigation references for a period of time. As the time increases from the moment of initializing your reference point, so grows the errors in your position due to integration drift. Therefore inertial navigation is only useful for short periods of

As others have said, celestial navigation has been used for as long as men have looked up at the stars. In fact, every scientific satellite put in space has some sort of "star tracker" telescope to use as an absolute position/pointing reference. There is even a group at NASA working on (open-source, I think) software to both miniaturize the technology for handheld terrestrial use and to generalize it for use on other planets--when astronauts go to the Moon and Mars, they won't have any GPS at all but one

We will always need Pakistan. Diesel fuel is too heavy to fly into the AO given the rate at which it is consumed. There would have to be a steady convoy of helicopters flying 24/7 to provide the fuel needed.

Resupply through Pakistan is not very relevant to this story. The lede is a red herring. Those supply routes are for the huge quantities of oil and other supplies the entire NATO/US army needs. This helicopter is doing small, unit-sized resupply runs to remote outposts.

I get the whole function over form thing, and I appreciate it most of the time. Heck, I was in the military, so I completely understand that function comes first. But that is one seriously stupid looking helicopter. Maybe other people like it, and if you do, that's fine. But I think it looks like it was designed by herp and derp. Couldn't they have modified a Bell 222 or something cool looking?

Sure...it would just be easier to shoot down (because it's wider), couldn't carry as much load, and wouldn't be able to operate at as high an altitude, which is kind of important in places like Afghanistan. Helicopters designed for heavy lifting generally are not as svelte as helicopters designed as status symbols for CEOs. As the Shorts Brothers said in reply to someone criticizing the looks of their (phenomenal, but ugly) cargo airplanes, "If you want to ship something, you put it in a box, right?

It's based on a real helicopter [wikipedia.org]. So it's form over function in the sense that it was designed to carry a pilot. If the airframe was designed from the ground up to not carry a pilot it would look significantly different I'm sure.

I think you all missed the point of what i was saying - I understand and appreciate function over form. I get that it was designed for a purpose. What I'm saying is that it's ugly. Not that it isn't capable of it's role, or that it's a bad design, just that it's ugly. It may be the best damn helicopter for the job, and if it is, then I give my full support (for what that's worth). But I will still stand by my opinion that it is and ugly aircraft. I think some of you took what I said way to seriously,

These remote-piloted helicopters and "flying jeeps" are being deployed in testing because they are thought to be safer methods of resupply than an 11-B driving a truck. This indicates that in Afghanistan, after almost ten years of occupation (longer than the Soviets stayed) most of the country is considered too dangerous for the occupiers to move freely in.

The second point is that these neat toys don't provide mass logistics supply to the forces in Afghanistan from friendly countries, the convoys of fuel tankers, food and ammunition, the thousands of tonnes of supplies needed each day to keep a modern military force operational. The US yahoos who blew up a bunch of Pakistani troops has cost the NATO forces that safe border convoy route and no technological tricks will restore that conduit. Abject apologies and reparations might help but this is the US who don't apologize for slaughtering other people's troops even by accident.

Third point, following on from the second is keeping these remotely-piloted aircraft flying is expensive in fuel terms. A truck will burn ten or fifteen gallons of gas or fuel oil to get ten tonnes of supplies a hundred miles. A helicopter burns a lot more fuel to cover the same distance with a much smaller load, and the fuel convoys across the Pakistani border have been shut down after the "accident". The only way to get that fuel into Afghanistan now is to fly it into airbases and that's both a logistical nightmare and also dollar-expensive.

Considering the Army is heavily investing in solar because getting fuel in theater is insanely expensive, shipping via helicopter doesn't sound like it's going to scale very well. Can't afford to fix Medicare, but let's keep shipping billions to Afghanistan, where there's not even a hint of light at the end of the tunnel.

Not only that, they asked the Pakistanis whether it they had troops in the area and was it okay to shoot. The Pakistanis said sure go ahead, we not be there.

My suspicion is that the Pakistanis knew damn well they had troops there, and ordered them to fire into Afghanistan. Then they turned around and sacrificed those troops so they could use it for internal politics.

This indicates that in Afghanistan, after almost ten years of occupation (longer than the Soviets stayed) most of the country is considered too dangerous for the occupiers to move freely in.

Actually, the summary says they're using it "at an undisclosed base". How exactly you jumped from "at an undisclosed base" to "most of the country is considered too dangerous", I'm not sure. All you can tell from the summary and the article is that it's dangerous at some bases and on the front lines.

It's not clear that the US "dun goofed". There have been a lot of indications over a number of years that Pakistani troops are either directly involved in attacking US troops or turning a blind eye to Taliban troops even when they're launching attacks against Afghani/NATO/US troops. You're essentially apologizing for beating up the guy who tried to jump you in a dark alley.

Frontline Pakistani troops aid and abet lethal insurgent attacks on American forces across the Afg

For a lengthier explanation of the obvious, the reason we can't have flying cars is because they are aircraft, that would cost a fortune to manufacture.

Furthermore, aircraft, including robot aircraft, require tremendous labor in the form of inspections and maintenance. If you skimp on those, you risk near certain death. (versus a car where if you skip maintenance you only risk death a small fraction of the time)

There's absolutely no reason why you can't use piston engines and run them on gas, which we're never going to run out of. Lubricating oils might become a problem - in fact, I see that as more of a biggie than running out of oil to use for fuel.

1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.
2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.
3) by beaming energy, we can also focus on electric weapons. Laser and rail guns make more sense than a round.

1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.

That would rather depend on what the cargo is, don't you think? Certainly any passengers on board wouldn't be happy with your arrangement.

2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.

Beamed energy requires a line of sight, which means it won't work over the horizon or through a mountain.

On the other hand, the military already does use "beamed energy" from the sun to cut down on its fuel usage. When fuel costs $400 per gallon [wsj.com], the cost-benefit decision for running your camp off solar panels gets really easy to make.

1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.

That would rather depend on what the cargo is, don't you think? Certainly any passengers on board wouldn't be happy with your arrangement.

Do you really think that they will use this to transport humans? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. It does not have the means to evade. About the only way that I would want to be in one, is for an air ambulance (willing to go into any situation for an evac). But yes, if shot down, I would rather it not blow me up (unless it is right in AQ territory).

2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.

Beamed energy requires a line of sight, which means it won't work over the horizon or through a mountain.

On the other hand, the military already does use "beamed energy" from the sun to cut down on its fuel usage. When fuel costs $400 per gallon [wsj.com], the cost-benefit decision for running your camp off solar panels gets really easy to make.

Hence the reason why you get it up to say 10 mile beaming so that you can beam it at a slow flying 30K' plane and then have it relay.
Now, as to solar, you ha

Two, abandon a few of these with what appears to be nice stuff (small arms, slightly damaged; steaks etc), wait till the people you want to kill get used to nicking the kit, then send in stuff with hidden GPS transmitters (don't tell me there's no GSM - just transmit to a drone). Nice.

If only. The problem is that the difficulty of modern war isn't to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible until they surrender. It's: OK NATO, you "won." But if you leave then warlords and extremists will take over, so you have to stay for several years and keep order during the time it takes to rebuild the country, hold elections and train a local police force not loyal to the previous dictator, and in the meantime insurgents are going to be lobbing IEDs at you and building their bases under hospitals to